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Many high school students’ dream is to get into their dream college. And for Lane Johansen (’18) that dream became a reality with not only acceptance, but a full-ride scholarship to Washington and Lee University.

Johansen started out in IB her freshman year, but dropped out halfway through her sophomore year.

“[IB] was super helpful, I definitely learned a lot,” Johansen said. However, she decided to drop out because she wasn’t getting enough sleep and was always swamped with work. “I was staying up until like 3 a.m. every night.”

But Johansen didn’t lose her motivation when she dropped out of IB. She became president of the Student Government Association, an officer for Girl Who Code, and the president of First Priority, a Christian based club here at Robinson.

Johansen didn’t only thrive academically, as she was recently crowned Prom Queen at her senior prom just over a week ago. “It was great,” Johansen said. “It felt amazing.”

Graduating in less than two months, Johansen now has her plan set for her future. She plans to attend Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Johansen discovered the liberal arts university through Instagram at the beginning of her junior year and she instantly fell in love.

It’s a very small school, with only about two thousand people enrolled, but that is a quality Johansen admires.

“It reminds me a lot of Robinson.”

“The professors are super invested in their students, the culture is amazing, it’s a beautiful campus, and it’s really academically driven,” she said, gushing about the school she is going to be attending in the fall.

So, Johansen’s hard work has paid off, literally, as she now gets to benefit from a cost-free education.

“The process to get [the scholarship] was very hard,” she said. “I wrote this super intense essay and did a lot of research on it. My entire essay was focused on my faith and First Priority and how it has grounded me.”

According to the university’s admissions site, The Johnson Scholarship Program “selects students on the basis of academic achievement, demonstrated leadership and their potential to contribute to the intellectual and civic life” of the campus.

The scholarship program chose the top three percent of applicants to be finalists. Those finalists got to fly up to the college for three days in the first week of March. There, they met with professors and other recipients of the same scholarship and even the president of the university.

Three weeks later, on the night she returned home from a mission trip in Costa Rica, Johansen found she had gotten the scholarship.

Johansen was ecstatic. “I couldn’t stop crying, I was shaking.”

“My whole family had gathered around, my mom prayed for me,” she said. “It was definitely an emotional process.”

Johansen credits her faith for her success.

“This entire process has been me releasing everything to God, knowing He has a plan for my life and that whatever happens is going to be what God wants for me.”

Johansen is ready and eager to head to Virginia and to start her college experience, and the scholarship certainly makes things easier.